As public concern is recently directed to health, the prevention of excessive calorie intake, obesity or diseases of adult people is regarded as serious. Demand for foods with a reduced amount of animal fat is being enhanced. However, when the amount of fat in sausage was simply reduced, it was inevitable not only that flavor thereof became worse but also that juicy feeling specific to sausage was lost and it became crumbly. Usual fat-rich sausages have good food texture and juicy feeling, that is, such a feeling as fat containing juice spread in the whole mouth. This can be explained by the fact that sausages contain 20-30% of fat such as hog fat and so on.
In Japanese published unexamined patent application No.112969/1989, though emulsion comprising edible oil and fat was used for substitution of animal fat, edible detergent was added so as to give its concentration of about 0.1-1% by weight for preparation of emulsion. That is, this concept was to use a stable emulsion. These stable emulsion affected meat structure of low fat sausages and could not make the sausages as juicy as sausage comprising the usual amount of fat.
In Japanese published unexamined patent application No.112770/1992, though mashed material of animal skin and water was used for substitution of fat, the meat structure of sausage was tight but crumbly and could not provide a juicy feeling, that is, such a feeling as fat containing juice spread throughout the whole mouth.
The present invention was aimed to overcome these defects of conventional low fat sausage. That is, an object of the present invention is to provide a novel sausage having the same meat structure and juicy feeling as usual sausage and a method of preparing such sausage.
More specifically, the present invention is to provide a novel low fat sausage which comprises heat-denatured whey protein, does not separate fat on heat treatment and has the same meat structure and juicy feeling as usual sausage comprising more than 20% of animal fat when it was heated and eaten and a preparing method thereof.